Why Isn’t There an App For That?

November 22, 2011

Even those who are not Apple fans have to admit what a success their strategy has been. Product innovation, services we did not realize we wanted, and industry revolution. According to Apple’s web page they have over 500,000 Apps in the App Store. There are many categories covered by these Apps relevant in our lives. Yet, only now are we beginning to see a way around the largest bottleneck in human history in terms of computing….the keyboard/keypad.

With any app, there is the awkwardness of registering. There is also the redundant exercise of re-entering the user name and password on a random basis. That random moment is a statistical anomaly because it is only when you are looking for a great restaurant nearby while all your friends are watching you. Why is there not an App for all of my usernames and passwords? One App to handle them all.

I was looking at some Apps to track my exercise. To track my exercise, I could;

1. carry my iPhone with me (yeah, like I really want to drop it again)

2. enter the data into the App (that’s exercise in itself)

3. Use Excel

Why is there not an App for this? Why can I not have a blue tooth and GPS enabled accelerometer in a watch tracking my exercise, time, calories, intensity of workout, heart rate, route, etc. Then when I come within range of my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, the data collected is uploaded automatically into the App for updating. I could then spend the few minutes I have reviewing charts and trends to tweak my workout, or increase the psychic dividends from the investment of my time and energy.

In the latest version of iPhone there is a built in App called Siri. This (She) becomes a possible route around the bottleneck. We can can speak to her just as Captain Kirk and the gang spoke to Computer onboard the Enterprise. She responds to requests by performing although I do not believe she speaks back to anyone….yet.

Since the middle 1800’s with the development of the keyboard, efforts have been aimed at improving the keyboard (now keypad) and not removing the obstacle (i.e. development of QWERTY, typing classes, dictation software). How many minutes per day could be saved, and ultimately increase human productivity, by having the technology to bypass the keypad? We speak more quickly than we can type. There are activities, like exercise, where the technology could be working for us seamlessly.

Can Apps lead us to potentially the greatest increase in human productivity in a single event?